Improper legal advice from a military paralegal would generally not lead to a dismissal of charges, but it could be a factor in other legal remedies. A service member’s Sixth Amendment right is a right to effective counsel, meaning a fully qualified and licensed attorney. A paralegal is not an attorney and is not authorized to provide independent legal advice.
If a service member received incorrect advice from a paralegal and acted on it to their detriment, the issue is not “ineffective assistance of counsel,” because counsel was never provided. Instead, a defense attorney would argue that the soldier’s subsequent actions or statements were not made knowingly and intelligently because they were based on flawed, unauthorized advice from a government agent. For example, if a paralegal improperly advises a soldier to waive their rights and confess, the attorney would file a motion to suppress that confession as being involuntary.
The argument to the judge would be that the government, through its paralegal, engaged in misconduct that led to the soldier making an uninformed decision. This could lead to the suppression of key evidence. While it is unlikely to lead to a complete dismissal of the charges on its own, if the suppressed evidence is critical to the government’s case, the practical result could be that the prosecutor is forced to drop the charges for lack of evidence.